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Originally Posted by Hektore
In our discussion about ways to solve the problem I came up with an idea that some of my friends thought was a pretty good idea. Radical restructuring of the school system such that the individual students control the pace of their learning. What we had envisioned is a school were the students work by themselves on the material they need to learn and the teachers would be there only as a resource. Rather than having a teacher lecture every day on topics, they would be there to answer questions and clarify and perhaps lecture at the students request. Then, instead of setting the bar at the level of the middle or bottom half of the class, the proficiency is set higher and you must achieve it to move on.
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They tried this actually back in the early 90's. It was called Outcome Based Education and it was a miserable flop. The A students got their A's. The B students got their B's. The C students got their C's. The D and F students got to keep redoing everything until they finally memorized the test and got a C or even a B. Not only did this mean kids no longer had to actually learn material, but it mean the average and above average students were cheated because they were no longer competative against the D and F students since the final grade did not indicate whether you took the test 1 or 100 times.
What we really need to do is get away from this confounded notion that all children must achieve the same success. If a get gets an F, then he gets a damn F. Unless extenuating circumstances are involved (the teacher didn't actually teach the material, or the scantron sheet was keyed wrong) then the F should stay. Period. That's what he earned. If you let him redo the test then you are slashing the competitive advantage earned by the kid who did the work and got the A the first time around. That's not fair to the responsible / smart ones.
It's up to the teacher to teach and teach well. It's up to the student to learn it. If you hold his hand through the whole damn thing then he'll get out in the real world and wonder why he keeps getting fired instead of being given a 300th chance.